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The Accidental
by Ali Smith


5.4

based on 24 reviews
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based on 12 votes
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Official Publisher Site

The latest novel from the award-winning Scottish author examines what happens to a family when a mysterious stranger shows up on their doorstep.

Pantheon, 320 pages
01/10/2006
$22.95

ISBN: 0375422250

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

NOTES:
Winner of the Whitbread Award for best novel. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Atlantic Monthly Joseph O'Neill

An enormous technical accomplishment that reminds us of the difference between linguistic hocus-pocus and real writing.

Boston Globe Gail Caldwell

The novel is small and glistening, one confident little shooting star instead of a cumbersome light show.

Daily Telegraph Alex Clark

It seems, on occasion, to promise more, and something of a different order and magnitude, than a novel ought to. Can there be much higher praise than that?

Daily Telegraph Katie Owen

Mordantly observant, pitch-perfect in her evocation of the speech and thought-patterns of her characters.

New York Observer Adam Begley

A delightful book, a satire that's playful but not cuddly, tart but not bitter, thoughtful but not heavy. [16 Jan 2006, p. 16]

Publishers Weekly

So sure-handed are Smith's overlapping descriptions of the same events from different viewpoints that her simple, disquieting story lifts into brilliance.

San Francisco Chronicle Michael Schaub

The last sentence of the book manages to be enlightening, confusing and almost destructive in its simple power.

The Independent Paul Bailey

To read The Accidental is to be excited from first to last. Smith has produced a page-turner for the sophisticated and literate as well as adherents of the "jolly good story".

TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Sophie Ratcliffe

Original, restless, formally and morally challenging, [Smith] remains a writer who resists definition.

Washington Post Jeff Turrentine

Smith is a dazzling talent, fearlessly lassoing different styles and ideas and playfully manipulating them.

Village Voice Jessica Winter,

Like the musical notation with which the novel shares a name, the Bunuelian absurdity at the heart of The Accidental lifts the tale a step sharp from domestic realism.

The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray

Though The Accidental is more spectacularly messy than brilliant, it has a strong perspective on what it means to be alive in the early '00s, and constantly tugged at by the disturbingly similar feelings of guilt and self-righteousness.

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

Dynamic if flawed.

The New York Times Book Review Laura Miller

Smith is a wizard at observing and memorializing the ebb and flow of the everyday mind

The New Yorker

Smithâs well-honed, even obsessive prose gives a feeling of eavesdropping on her charactersâ innermost thoughts.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Caroline Adderson

It's not perfect, but the relationships here are deeper precisely because they are not accidental. [9 Jul 2005]

The Guardian Steven Poole

The Accidental has an infectious sense of fun and invention. The story goes through some surprising reversals and arrives at a satisfying conclusion, which is also a beginning.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

While The Accidental doesn't add up to much more than a clever stunt, Smith pulls it off with terrific pizzazz.

Kirkus Reviews

Dazzling wordplay and abundant imagination invigorate a tale of lives interrupted.

London Review Of Books Eleanor Birne

Things do not progress neatly; they circle and return. But the writing is fresh and unexpected each time.

Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp

The writing brims with wit, humor, and energy.

Booklist Allison Block

Smith renders acrobatic prose that seems in a perpetual state of acceleration. [1 Dec 2005, p. 27]

Los Angeles Times Richard Eder

Like an elaborately faceted lens, Smith's writing aims to magnify her story and its characters. Instead, angled as it is, it distends its creator. [29 Jan 2006]

Bookslut Eoin Cunningham

The Accidental ends up more an exercise in cleverness than a story. Equally, the reader’s enjoyment of The Accidental will be inextricably linked to their appetite for such an exercise. If you aren’t swept away by Smith’s undoubted way with words, and you rely on the bones of the story itself, you will be disappointed.

The average user rating for this book is 5.4 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Wendy V gave it a0:
"That which is written with little effort is read with little pleasure" Samual Johnson. This banal, stream of consciousness rubbish seems to have been written with no effort at all.

Kathy R gave it a4:
One of the most irritating stories I have ever read. I wanted the story to match the quality of the writing, but, for me, it never did.

Sean W gave it a3:
This one really fooled the critics. It reminds me of the self-indulgences of the product coming out of an aspiring poet's worshop. Showy, empty nonsense from beginning to end.

david m gave it a10:
This is, quite literally, an amazing novel. Funny, sad, literate, brilliantly written - it manages to be outrageoulsy readable yet consistently thought-provoking at the same time. The best book I've read in years.

Rosie gave it a4:
This book is too clever for its own good. It's irritatingly self-aware, full of insider jokes that are dull even to the initiated. I don't want to be a part of Ali Smith's club.

Carol C gave it a2:
The writing is brilliant but the characters are boring!

The Accidental by Ali Smith

The Accidental
by Ali Smith